UCSB’s numbers continue to reach record-breaking heights on top academic rankings.

Most recently, Times Higher Education placed the campus 17th among the world’s best universities for engineering and technology. The university was also ranked 29th place — out of 200 contenders — on the magazine’s list of top universities in the world.

Acting Dean of Engineering Larry Coldren said he was flattered that UCSB was the only UC campus aside from UC Berkeley to be ranked in the top 30 sector.

“It is wonderful to see our relatively small College of Engineering with its five departments rank fifth amongst U.S. public universities, fairly close behind such huge engineering schools as Michigan and Illinois, which are usually ranked much higher,” Coldren said. “Although size is still a factor, Times Higher Education tries to focus on the quality and impact of the school in its normalizations.”

According to Serena Halterman, a fourth-year mechanical engineering major, the rankings are indicative of the department’s hard work and dedication.

“The engineering program here has always been really challenging and now I feel like the rest of the world knows it,” Halterman said. “The rankings definitely reflect our school and I think this really does well for the university.”

THE considered five categories while determining its 2010-11 rankings: teaching, research, citations, industry income and international mix. UCSB scored particularly high in the latter three categories.

According to THE, this year’s rankings utilized more objective measurements than in years past and therefore should be viewed as a correction to previous listings in which UCSB had been excluded from the top 50 listings.

THE’s editor Ann Mroz said the fact that UCSB has been ranked well within the top half of the leading 200 universities in the world is an impressive achievement.

“The top 200 universities in the world represent only a tiny fraction of world higher education and any institution that makes it into this table is truly world-class,” Mroz said in a press release.

In addition to these most recent achievements, this year’s U.S. News and World Report names UCSB as the ninth top public university and 39th “Best National University” — the university’s highest rankings to date. The campus also stands at a prestigious number 11 in Washington Monthly magazine’s list of “Top 30 National Universities,” which tends to favor public universities over the more conventional Ivy League picks.